The Gold Gala had the glitz and glamour of Hollywood, but AI loomed large

• Gold House's Gold Gala honored Asian Pacific leaders in Los Angeles on Saturday.
• The event had all the classic Hollywood trappings, including star-studded presenters and honorees.
• But AI and Silicon Valley loomed large on the night.

On the surface, the Gold Gala put on by Gold House to honor Asian Pacific leaders buzzed with all the classic Hollywood glitz and glamour.

Hosted in Los Angeles at the Music Center's Jerry Moss Plaza, hundreds of black-tie-clad guests walked the gold carpet, sipped signature cocktails, and chowed down on Filipino food from James Beard Award-winning chef Lord Maynard Llera as they gathered in 90-degree heat on Saturday.

An impressive showing of A-list talent presented and performed, and honorees included groundbreaking directors Jon M. Chu and Ang Lee, and musicians Laufey, Anderson.Paak, and Megan Thee Stallion.

Gold House, which describes itself as "a cultural ecosystem that unites, invests in, and champions Asian Pacific leaders," used the event to recognize the organization's A100, its 100 most impactful Asian Pacific leaders in culture and society over the last year — including Business Insider CEO Barbara Peng — and its top A1 honorees, deemed to have had the most impact within their respective industries over the same period.

Despite the spotlight on the entertainment industry, the arrival of artificial intelligence — and the influence of Silicon Valley — was notable throughout the night.

Aravind Srinivas, the CEO and cofounder of Perplexity AI, an AI-based search engine that wants to put Google on its heels, received the A1 Business & Technology Award and joked about being famous in Silicon Valley. Elsewhere, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, OpenAI's Mark Chen, and Anthropic CFO Krishna Rao's names and images appeared on a screen flashing the list of the A100 honorees.

Gold House CEO and Executive Chairman Bing Chen also quipped about using ChatGPT to write a poem he read at the start of the dinner ceremony, and guests at at least one table discussed guardrails for kids using AI.

It was a potent reminder of how quickly the technology has become a part of the cultural lexicon and of the tension between human creativity versus the machine.

Designer Sabyasachi Mukherjee, an A1 honoree, acknowledged that "the world is changing now as we move from the age of influence to the age of intelligence, and AI is going to make groundbreaking changes in many sectors."

However, Mukherjee warned that AI may face a tougher time breaking into the entertainment industry.

"AI is going to die a very quick and painful death because people will understand the importance of humanity," he said.